


Sweater Weather

by StilesBastille24



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Get Together, M/M, Sam Wilson is the best bro, and Steve's, angst!Bucky is the love of my life, slight animal mistreatment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2016-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-02 15:01:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StilesBastille24/pseuds/StilesBastille24
Summary: Bucky doesn’t know what he wants with Steve. He couldn’t name it then and he can’t name it now. But sometimes it burns so fiercely in his veins Bucky thinks he’ll catch fire with it. That he’ll burn everything down around him because of it, including Steve. He isn’t sure if Steve even knows it. If Steve realizes that Bucky knotted Steve into the rope around his neck, chaffing his skin raw every single day. Bucky wears him like a badge of honor and the heaviest weight at the same time. And Bucky’s never going to let him go, so Steve’s got to be the one to cut the rope.





	

**Author's Note:**

> In the midst of a long Steve/Bucky fic, I decided this was more important to write. Got thoughts on it, share them with me here or on Tumblr. 
> 
> Title from The Neighborhood's song Sweater Weather which fit with this story for me.

Bucky’s standing at the edge of the building, looking down at the millions of lights that sparkle and shine below. He thinks if he squints hard enough, he could see into the windows of the apartments across from him. The people inside living their lives with television screens on; computers flicking from site to site; washing machines running; kitchen dishes being washed by harried parents. 

These people, they have lives, they’ve got real things that are happening for them and around them. They have no idea who he is. A footmark in history that has since been forgotten. Of all the billions of people on this planet, Bucky’s standing alone on the top of a building and he knows there’s exactly one other person out of those billions who would care about that. 

One person that he’s been running from for so long that it seems instinctive now. There are memories he tries to fight on the good days when he remembers more than just his name and the city he’s in. And every single one of those memories carries this crystallized image of Steven Grant Rogers. 

Bucky sits down, kicks his legs off the side of the building and sighs. In his pocket, his phone vibrates. Bucky wants to ignore it, but he’s reaching inside his pocket anyway, pulling out his phone and answering. 

“What?”

“That any way to greet a friend?” Sam asks.

“What, Sam?” Bucky corrects. 

Sam huffs, “All the shit I put up with.”

“You’re like Atlas, holding up the whole world on those broad shoulders of yours,” Bucky says flatly. 

“Damn straight,” Sam answers. 

Silence falls on the line between them and Bucky has no instinct to break it. He didn’t come back quite as social as he once was. He remembers being a chatter box, he remembers flirting with anything that moved. Now he spends time dreaming of Japan. 

He’d had a mission there while he was the Winter Solider. A ghost mission. He spent three months slipping through the country unseen until the bullet marked for his victim settled squarely between a pair of hazel eyes. 

What he remembers is Japan being quiet. People rode the subways without shouting to their friends three seats over. Strangers didn’t bump into each other on the street. People didn’t bother with fucking small talk. Bucky missed that empty social air like his lungs missed air when he was held underwater too long. 

“Okay, since you’re giving me nothing here,” Sam finally says, “is Steve back yet?”

Bucky drags his gaze from the apartment across the street where a young woman is practicing ballet in her living room. He lies back on the gravel covering of the roof, crosses his metal arm behind his head and stares up at the light pollution blocking out the stars. 

“Don’t know, I’m not back yet either.”

“Oh yeah?” Sam asks with mild surprise. “You got yourself a hot date too?”

Bucky thinks of flashes of dark skin, straight white teeth, red lipstick, brown eyes. Twisted up bed sheets, moans of pleasure, sweat on skin. “She was hot.”

“Damn,” Sam says in full out surprise. “With all the shit you give us when we try and talk to you, I would never have guessed you for a ladies’ man.”

The club was one Natasha had shown him. “They won’t ask for your name. And you don’t ask for theirs unless you share yours first. Everyone’s looking for a good time, nobody’s looking for a chain to hold them down.” She’d grinned at him, her teeth showing sharply, “You’re going to love it.”

Bucky hadn’t loved it. He didn’t love much of anything anymore. But he had enjoyed it. He’d never mentioned the club to Steve. Or the girls he met there. Or the guys he pushed up against brick walls or the bruising kisses he sucked against the column of their throats. There were parts of Bucky’s life that were just his.  
He didn’t think that was true for Steve. Steve shared everything with Bucky, as if he could fill the void between them with all the secrets he unburdened, with all the pointless thoughts and feelings he wanted Bucky to know about. 

Sometimes Bucky wondered how different things were for Steve. Bucky could remember their past, he knew they didn’t fit together the same way anymore. It didn’t bother him. Nothing had been the same for him in so long that ‘familiar’ was a word that left a bad taste in his mouth. 

For Steve, though, he didn’t know if that was true. Maybe Steve desperately wanted his best friend back. The good old pal who always had a smile and smooth phrase ready. Bucky didn’t think so, though. Steve wasn’t the same either. He was sharper and that was saying a lot because Steve had always been bony corners and jagged edges. People just wanted to pretend that wasn’t true. They wanted to see Steve as this American hero wrapped up in a soft American flag. 

“You going to see her again?” Sam asks. “Get all friendly?”

Bucky laughs. “No. I don’t really do friendly. See, I have this whole tortured past thing going on for me and friendly would just mess that all up.”

Sam laughs in return. “Whatever, man. With that emo hair you won’t cut, I don’t think it’d matter how friendly you were. Girls would still want to save you from yourself and Steve’s still going to want to Chicken Soup For Your Soul love you back to life.”

“That what you think?” Bucky asks curiously. He doesn’t get a lot of outside perspectives on his relationship with Steve. Of course, that’s mainly because he refuses to engage in conversation with any of the Avengers except for Natasha. 

“Hell, I don’t know, man. Steve spends half our time talking about the good old days and then comparing it to some weird shit you did recently like they’re the same thing and I’m thinking, fuck, my boy’s done lost his marbles.”

Bucky closes his eyes and tries to bring to mind a recent memory that fits Sam’s description. When nothing comes, he asks, “Like what?”

“Some shit about how one time you guys were trying to save this dog from some mean old guy who lived on your street but the old guy caught you out and instead of running away you gave him a lecture on animal abuse? Then he starts talking about how when you guys went to the Central Park Zoo you started talking about wanting a ball python? Like what the hell am I supposed to do with that?” Sam demands. 

Bucky barks out a laugh that catches him full in the ribs and makes him smile. “Makes perfect sense to me, pal.”

“Well of course it does, you and Steve are these two moldy old peas in the same damn pea pod.”

“Fuck you,” Bucky says, still smiling. “Old Man Joe was a real bastard. He kept this dog after his old lady ran out on him and he named the dog after her, Maria. And he used to treat that dog like shit. Yell at it day and night, starve it when he got real mad, kick it in the ribs when he came home, spray it with a hose when he was plastered. And me and Stevie, we’d just had enough one day.”

Bucky can see the whole thing perfectly. The velvety darkness of night as they’d crept down the street to Old Man Joe’s. They stayed outside his wooden fence for a full half hour trying to make sure the bastard was asleep. 

“Then we climbed over the fence and found poor Maria where she was tied against the side of the house. I’d nicked a switch blade from my dad, gave it to Steve to saw through the rope. I kept an eye out for Old Man Joe. Steve was handier with that stuff. He helped his ma with the cooking, got real good at cutting stuff up quick and neat. Thing was, though, Maria started going wild at the sight of us. Probably thought we were going to give her a kick in the ribs too,” Bucky says darkly. 

“Old Man Joe was sleeping in his rocker on the first floor. We’d figured he’d be up on the second floor, so when he rounded out of that house without ever turning the lights on, neither of us was prepared. I shouted for Steve to run, but he was determined to sever the rope. So he kept right on sawing and I went straight up to Old Man Joe and pushed him hard in the chest while he went ranting about how he was going to beat us to death for fucking with his dog.”

“Jesus, I can’t imagine growing up with the pair of you,” Sam says. 

Bucky smirks. “Yeah, we were hell for our parents. Anyway, Steve got the dog loose, Old Man Joe went to lunge for Steve, I shoved him back again, he clocked me in the jaw, Steve threw a rock at him, half the neighborhood was awake by then, and I just grabbed Old Man Joe by the shoulders and shoved up the stairs. He tripped and fell on his ass, and standing over him, I gave him this grand speech about how a man treats his dog says a lot about how he treats his wife and how only the lowest of men would take out their anger on an animal they are supposed to be taking care of. I also said some shit about how the inner most layer of hell was saved for wife beaters and animal abusers.”

“How did you two get out of that without your necks broke?” Sam asks.

“Well, thing of it was, seems the neighborhood agreed about the whole animal abuse and wife beater thing, because when I was done, the neighbors started shouting  
their own sentiments out of their open windows. Calling Old Man Joe every name in the book and saying he didn’t deserve to own a flea let alone a dog like Maria.” 

Bucky laughs and Sam joins him.

“So what happened to Maria?”

“Don’t really know. She shot out of there like a bullet and we didn’t see her again. Wherever she ended up though, it had to be heaven compared to the hell she started off in.” 

“And what’s that got to do with a ball oython?” Sam asks. 

Bucky realizes Sam is a hell of a lot smarter than he likes to act. He already knows the whole story about Maria, after all, he said Steve had told him about it. 

“Don’t you know?” Bucky asks, his words edging into dangerous territory. He’s not mad, but he’s annoyed. Sam doesn’t need to play dumb with him. 

“Why don’t you tell me?” Sam presses and at least the rouse is up.

“I’m the fucking dog,” Bucky says flatly. “Steve’s scared I’m going to bolt now that I’ve been let free of my hell. So when we saw that ball python at the zoo and I started looking at it like it was something I liked, Steve starts telling me how you can own them as pets now. How we couldn’t own one in the City, but if we moved further out, we could.”

“You going to get a snake, Barnes?” Sam jokes.

“No, I’m not getting a fucking snake,” Bucky sighs, aggravated. 

“But what did you tell Steve?” 

Bucky makes a face he knows Sam can’t see, a face Natasha has labeled as his ‘murder’ face, but he answers Sam’s question anyway. “I told him it would take more than a snake to get me out of the City.” 

“And ain’t that beautiful?” Bucky can hear the smile in Sam’s voice and it makes his expression all the more deadly. 

Bucky sits up abruptly, squinting across the ballerina’s apartment. She’s done dancing now and running through cool down exercises. “The fuck we talking about this for?” 

“Just reminding you to return from your night out and check in on your python,” Sam says lightly. 

“He ain’t my fucking ball python,” Bucky says harshly. 

“He’s your something,” Sam corrects. “Goodnight, Barnes.” He hangs up without waiting for a reply.

Bucky shoves the phone back in his pocket and regrets ever answering. The calm that he’d acquired earlier in the night with his body pressed to someone else’s has been replaced by the familiar feel of creeping displacement. Bucky hates things that are familiar. 

He stands up and drops down from the ledge of the building. A story later, he lands hard on the balcony to his shared apartment with Steve. The cement trembles under his feet but doesn’t give. Behind him, the living room is dark. If Steve’s back, he’s either in his bedroom or the bathroom. 

Bucky leans back against the metal railing and wavers between going in and staying out. He doesn’t want to talk to Steve whenever he gets home tonight. He isn’t interested in the candle lit dinner he shared with the Waitress. 

Bucky hasn’t bothered to learn her name. He doesn’t care what it is. If she makes Steve happy, then maybe he’ll come around to giving a shit what Steve calls her. In the meantime, it’s just a waste of memory space. 

Steve has this whole romantic story about how they met. Something to do with aliens, New York under attack, tight spandex that was too blue and not built for defense at all, crumbling buildings, a waitress in a yellow get up with a little white apron, and Steve going knight and shining armor on her ass. 

Bucky wonders if Steve ever gets tired of being the hero. But Steve’s always been good at it. Bucky has never had that shine to him. He’s the behind the scenes guy, the one gutting men that Captain America couldn’t. He doesn’t care too much for being a hero. Would be boring after all the things he’s done. 

This is Steve’s fifth date with the Waitress. Every time he comes back lit up like the Empire State building. Steve gushes about her, not like he did about Peggy, but all the ways that the Waitress is whip smart, how she cares about things worth caring about, how she doesn’t care that he’s Captain America, just that he’s some guy who saved her life. 

It makes Bucky sick, if only because he can’t stomach that kind of a connection with somebody else. Sharing the details of his life, what a fucking joke. Even if torture and murder were subjects Bucky enjoyed discussing, he imagines his dates wouldn’t find them fit bonding material. 

Bucky doesn’t belong here anymore. This whole wide world with its billions of people, it’s not his anymore. It hasn’t been his for a very long time. He’s got one tether, and it’s holding him down hard. Bucky wonders if Steve knows that Steve’s the rope, that the world is Old Man Joe, and Bucky is still Maria, waiting for the moment when his rope snaps and he’s able to run as far and fast as he can.

Maybe he’ll end up dead, car crash or some normal shit like that. Maybe he’ll end up living on a mountainside killing his food with a bow and arrow. Maybe he’ll build his own house with wood he chops down. Maybe he’ll just fade away. But there’s a heaven here and it’s waiting for Steve to let go of the goddamn rope around Bucky’s neck.

The front door of the apartment clicks open and Steve steps inside, his tie loose around his neck. He pauses on the threshold, eyes meeting Bucky’s in the dark. Bucky reaches forward, slides the glass door open, but stays where he is, metal banister biting into his back. 

Steve closes the door behind him, flicks the lights on so that the golden glow spills across the distance between them. “Not creepy at all, Buck,” he comments. 

Bucky shrugs. “Needed some air.”

“They’ve got windows for that. You push them open and all this fresh air comes pouring in. It’s quite the invention. Even had ‘em back when we were kicking around Brooklyn.” Steve doesn’t cross to him either and their separated by that ever present void that Steve keeps trying to fill with his words. 

“The Waitress treat you alright?” Bucky asks, keeping the promise to himself to learn the Waitress’s name if Steve says yes.

“You’d like her,” Steve says instead of a direct answer. “She’s a great girl. Reminds me of Becky a little, the way she looked cute as a button but she’d snap on you in a second just to throw you off.”

“You saying you had a crush on my kid sister?” Bucky asks, half a smile tugging at his lips. 

Steve looks shocked for a second. “No! I just – “ He shakes his head. “Jeez, had no idea that was going to come out that way.” He laughs. “I loved Becky, just not like that, ya know?”

“I know,” Bucky says with a head nod. “But the Waitress, you like her like that?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I think you would too. She wants to meet you. Told her you aren’t the friendliest of guys. She told me you’re her favorite Howlie.”

Bucky ducks his head so his hair sways in front of his face. “Aw shucks, mister,” he simpers. 

Steve laughs. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Bucky looks back up, trying to figure out what Steve is saying, because liking the Waitress isn’t the same as her treating Steve right. “You gonna keep her around?”

“Think I could marry her,” Steve says frankly. “I mean, not tomorrow, or anything, but if we stuck it out, I think that’s where this would take us.”

Bucky thinks of flashes of dark skin, straight white teeth, red lipstick, brown eyes. Twisted up bed sheets, moans of pleasure, sweat on skin. Except the scene is changing and those eyes are blue, the lips are petal pink, that skin is familiar and golden. Bucky glares over his shoulder. The ballerina is sitting on her couch eating ice cream. 

“Long as you’re happy,” Bucky grinds out. 

“I am,” Steve says slowly. Bucky hears his footsteps taking him across the living room, towards the open balcony door. “I could be with her too.”

Bucky turns back to Steve, eyes fiercely determined to give nothing away. “Then you should. Marry her, that is.” The words come out perfectly even. 

Steve nods like the conversation is over. “How was your night?”

“I loved you first.” 

The words come out venomous, like a poison meant to sink into the blood, twist their way up to his heart, break down each blood cell until his heart is nothing but a withered organ. 

Steve says nothing, just watches Bucky with dark blue eyes. 

Bucky doesn’t know what he wants with Steve. He couldn’t name it then and he can’t name it now. But sometimes it burns so fiercely in his veins Bucky thinks he’ll catch fire with it. That he’ll burn everything down around him because of it, including Steve. 

That’s why the rope has to snap, because he wants to consume Steve, wants to take him apart until Steve can never belong to anyone else the way he belongs to Bucky, the way Bucky belongs to him. 

They say you can’t own another person, but Bucky knows that’s bullshit. Hydra owned him. They owned every fucking thing about him. And when he got free of them, Bucky decided to choose who would own him the second time around, because someone was always going to try and own him. So he chose Steve, someone who would never use that ownership against Bucky. 

He isn’t sure if Steve even knows it. If Steve realizes that Bucky knotted Steve into the rope around his neck, chaffing his skin raw every single fucking day. Bucky wears him like a badge of honor and the heaviest weight at the same time. And Bucky’s never going to let him go, so Steve’s got to be the one to cut the rope. 

“I loved you first.” The words grind out like shrapnel. 

“You love me now?” Steve asks. 

Bucky feels like he’s about to vomit blood, like someone’s shoved glass into his insides and sliced them up real good. His metal hand is gripping the banister so hard it’s bending and warping. 

“I’m going to love you after this whole world goes to hell and we’re dead in the grave, bones crumbling to dust. I’m going to love you when the sun fails to rise and we’re all consumed by a darkness so bleak we go blind. I loved you first and I’m going to love you last, long after your heart stops beating.” 

Steve presses forward, the last few feet separating them vanishing. “You think anyone ever loved you the way I do? You’re fucking wrong, Bucky. You think I give a shit about who you were when all that has ever mattered to me is that you are you, whatever shape that takes.”

Bucky grins, so brittle the slightest wind could break it. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Steve breathes out, grabbing a fistful of Bucky’s hair and crushing their mouths together in a kiss that hurts more than it soothes. 

Bucky kisses back with teeth, one arm securing Steve by the waist, his other grasping at Steve’s back. Now that he has him, Bucky’s never letting go. 

Steve presses into the kiss, letting Bucky bite at him, letting the fear push its way out of Bucky, letting him run as far away as he needs to. And when Bucky pulls back, panting, his forehead resting on Steve’s shoulder, Steve kisses his temple, hard. 

“You’ve got me, Buck, you’ve got all of me. You always have.”

“Ain’t much of me left,” Bucky says. “But what there is, it’s yours.”

“You’ve always been everything to me, Bucky. Nothing then or now is going to change that.” 

Their wrapped up in each other the way Bucky always wanted. The line between where Bucky starts and Steve ends is blurred, their sharing the same space, the same breath, the same heart beat. The rope had snapped so suddenly Bucky didn’t even feel it, he’d run and he’d circled back around, found his heaven exactly where he left it.

“Where do you think she ran to?” Bucky asks.

“One street over,” Steve says with a quiet huff of laughter. “Family with a whole passel of kids. They named her Trinity.”

Bucky laughs in disbelief. “Course she did.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, lifting Bucky’s face up to his, “of course she did.” He kisses Bucky firmly, hands cupped around the hinges of his jaw. 

Bucky leans into the kiss, breathing in the familiar smell of Steve, leaning against the familiar shape of his friend. It doesn’t feel like a prison anymore, familiar. It feels new again. 

“Her name’s Rachel,” Steve says, as their kiss ends. 

“I’ll be sure to address the wedding invitation to the Waitress,” Bucky replies. 

Steve laughs brightly, grabbing Bucky by the hand and tugging him into the warm apartment. “You planning on marrying me, Buck? Aw, that’s so sweet.” 

“Not with that attitude, I’m not,” Bucky complains, letting Steve pull him down the hallway toward their bedrooms. 

“Common law marriage, it’s a thing,” Steve cites. “Think we qualify. Eighty years is nothing to laugh at. You know most relationships end before ten years?”

“Really? What a shame for those shmucks,” Bucky says, crawling onto the bed after Steve. “Their fault for not falling in love with you first.” 

Steve grins. “Come here, Buck.”

There might only be one person in a billion that Bucky belongs to, that he belongs with, but that one person is Steven Grant Rogers and so Bucky thinks it all balances out in the end. After all, Bucky loved him first and he sure as hell is going to love him last.

**Author's Note:**

> [tumblr](http://blueeyeschina.tumblr.com)


End file.
